ClaphamFox

Rowett was 1/4 for the Blackburn job earlier today. He's now 7/4, with Michael O'Neill favourite at 2/5. It sounds like Rowett was dragging his heels over accepting the job so they moved on...

Just had a read of Jordan Blackwell's article. Fair play to him for writing this: "It’s clear from the off-field woes that this is a club without competent leadership. It’s a club that is failing upstairs, and where there’s been no accountability. If there’s a culture of failure from the very top, and a culture where mismanagement and ineptitude is fine, that’s likely to filter into the squad too. "The players will take the brunt of the blame for the way the final half-hour panned out, and they are definitely at fault, but it’s also a sign of a club that is failing at its core."

Because they were hoping King would provide enough of a boost to see us through to the end of the season, when they'd be able to choose from a wider range of candidates.

I'm not sure why I'm posting this as I don't really believe the odds mean anything, but Rowett has just narrowed to joint favourite at 5/1.

This is it in a nutshell. A club that is well run—with clear goals, a strong culture and quality people working at different levels—is not reliant on constantly unearthing brilliant managers. They just need competent ones because the ingredients for success are already there. A shambolic club with a rotten culture will always require a near genius-level manager to offset the shitshow around him. And those managers are hard to come by.

Possibly, but I’m leaning to the view that the club has been offering the job around but simply can’t find any takers.

I just had a look at the odds. The previous leading contenders have all drifted and the shortest price on any candidate is 6/1. I can’t recall ever seeing a ‘next manager’ market as wide as this so long after the previous manager left. Nobody wants the job.

Supposedly he was there last night but was last seen sprinting down the Raw Dykes Road after full-time with a crazed look in his eyes, shoving anybody in his way to the ground, screaming, “Out of my way! OUT OF MY ****ING WAY!!”

It will be well known within football circles what a shambles we are behind the scenes. There is no chalice more poisoned than ours in the entire league. So yes, you’re probably right that nobody will take it.

The only candidate who is currently out of work and might make a difference is Rowett, and he’s about to go to Blackburn. They’ll probably send us down on the final day if we’re not already down by then.

If he delivered the same level of improvement he did last time, we would end up with around 50 points and stay up.

Great block by Winks - he was shaping up to score.

I bought Hatful of Hollow on vinyl from a second hand record shop somewhere (I think) near where High Street meets St Nicholas Place in 1990/91. I clearly remember getting home and playing it for the first time. It was one of those moments you have during your teenage years when you feel a whole new world has opened up and your taste in music will never be quite the same again. It turned out the copy I picked up was a rare first edition. It went in my parents' loft along with the rest of my records after I went to live overseas for a while in my 20s. Four years ago I purchased a new record player and told my parents I wanted my records back. It turned out my mum had given them all to a second hand store several years before without telling me to "make space". "I didn't think you'd need them again," she said. Cheers mum

I have previously commented that if we'd have kept 11 men on the pitch against Charlton and Birmingham we'd have got something out of both games. I felt there was a difference between how the players were responding to King compared to how they were playing under Cifuentes. Assuming we keep 11 men on the pitch, tonight will tell us whether I was right or if King is just Marti redux. It feels like a pivotal night for both King and the club.

Has he succeeded anywhere as a manager outside of Norway? I don't understand why people want him.

This is true, but you improve your chances of a manager 'clicking' with the club if you have a strong culture, clear direction and effective leadership from the board. If everything behind the scenes is in place, a competent manager should be able to succeed. But if the culture has become toxic, there's no leadership and the club is generally a mess, you'll need to find a genius manager to make a difference—and they are hard to come by.

Sure I get the logic—I just think that sequence of events was always unlikely. I don't think Top will want to sell unless/until we're back in the PL, partly for commercial reasons and partly because I suspect he doesn't want to dishonour his dad's memory by leaving us while we're in the shit. So even if the KP group were under severe stress, I think there's a chance he'd want to cling onto the club for longer than is financially rational. As unpalatable as it is, I think the most realistic route back to having a club we can all believe in again is if the club somehow manages to appoint good people for the vacant manager, sporting director, CEO and commercial director positions. I understand this is a very big 'if', but sadly I think it's the best hope we have. Getting relegated will make it less likely that KP sell up, not more.

It is not going to be Martin for the following reasons: 1. He is currently out of work. If we wanted him and he wanted us, he'd already be in post. 2. He is severely damaged goods after the Rangers gig, and while our owners make bad decisions they don't typically appoint somebody off the back of a spectacular failure. 3. Everybody knows that what we need more than anything else is somebody who can organise a defence and make us more resilient. Martin has shown in every job he's had that organising a defence is not his forte. 4. The club knows it would be a profoundly unpopular choice among the fans at a time when we're at serious risk of a major drop in attendances next season. It would be commercial suicide to appoint him. 5. One of the few encouraging things to come out of Top's recent interviews is that he seems to have finally let go of his Man City obsession and accepts that football has moved on. Martin's time as a viable candidate for us has passed. Gerrard would be just as much of a disaster as Martin. After three managers in a row who lost the dressing room at Seagrave we need somebody who has proven he can inspire and lead a squad of players. Gerrard proved himself to be a horrendous man manager at Villa, where he was hated by the players. Unfortunately he's also tactically clueless, which means he has literally nothing to offer. Thankfully I think there is very little chance of the club choosing him anyway.

It is not going to be Martin.

I’ve no doubt this is what they are hoping. The two red cards in King’s first two games have postponed a proper assessment of whether he can guide us to survival, giving the club an excuse to dither. We should know a bit more by FT tonight, assuming we finish the game with 11 men.

This is also what I think. If our preferred candidate was currently out of work and actually wanted the job, he'd be in place already. So it's probably safe to say we're unlikely to appoint Martin, Gerrard, Coleman or Rowett. Southgate clearly isn't a genuine candidate. If our target manager is currently in work, as seems likely, the question then is whether they're willing to quit and join us now (which will mean we're haggling with their club over compensation) or want to see out the season with their club and join us in the summer (which would imply we're looking for—and probably struggling to find—somebody for the interim gig). This would bring Smith, Skubala, Keane, Challinor etc into play.

There’s no actual evidence we’re thinking of any of them.